A social skills group for children

Abstract

An NHS Trust set up groups to teach social skills to children and adolescents using a cognitive behavioural framework. One group of seven children (five boys and two girls) is described. Parents were invited to a parallel parents' group. Each group lasted for 90 minutes and ran weekly for 6 weeks. Extensive liaison with parents and teachers took place before, during and after the group. Analysis of pre- and postgroup questionnaires sent to parents and teachers indicated improved social functioning, outside the group, for most of the children. Parents valued the dialogue with professionals and often felt supported by them for the first time. Therapists' contact with teachers ensured full knowledge of children's behaviour and the transfer of skills to schools. Cognitive behavioural techniques with children under-going group work require intensive liaison to facilitate generalization of skills learnt.     

Telling Them Their Own Stories: Legitimizing sexual and reproductive health education in rural Bangladesh

Most people in Bangladesh are rural, poor and underprivileged. The incidence of sexual disease has increased, but little has been done to educate rural people about sexual and reproductive health. In 1997, a sexual and reproductive health project was initiated within a collaborative research agreement between the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR,B) and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), an indigenous non-governmental organization which pursues integrated rural development strategies. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 65 different women, men, boys and girls revealed significant sexual health problems and a lack of knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. The interviews were transformed into composite problem-solving picture stories and information about sexual and reproductive health. Stories mirrored respondents' interpretations of sexual behavior. Those who had achieved or ascribed legitimacy to talk about sex, e.g. traditional health providers, were trained to utilize the methods and materials. Qualitative evaluations revealed important changes in health providers' self-confidence, business and personal interactions as well as changes in clients' behavior. This project found that sexual and reproductive health education can be integrated into indigenous health activities if the sociocultural context in which sex, relationships, risks, diseases and communication occur is reflected in a program's content and methods. Unquestionably, there is a great need for sex education in rural Bangladesh.     

Using the method of normalisation for mapping group marks to individual marks: some observations

Abstract

The method of normalisation combined with peer ratings is utilised to provide the solution to the biased rating problem of mapping group work marks to individual marks. We critically evaluate the method of normalisation following the findings of an article which argued against the use of self and/or peer rating mechanism. We demonstrate that the findings of that article also hold for the method of normalisation as the influence of human behavioural factors are not accommodated in the designs. Additionally, we argue that the method (and its variants) is rather complicated, where all possible contingencies are not pre-specified. It makes the arrangement between tutors and students in conducting peer assessments incomplete and unverifiable by a third party.     

Education Research for Policy and Practice: Secondary Education Reforms in Sri Lanka

With the establishment of a host of new education institutions, educational policy making in Sri Lanka demonstrated a marked change during the last fifteen years. The idea of a national education policy that emerged during this period attempted to ensure continuity of educational policy while at the same time contributing to the production of trainable youths who could become successful in any type of activity they selected for their future. The policy was formulated with the intention of providing a good general education to the young of the nation and began to be implemented in 1998. The high academic bias, rigidity of curricula, and the widening mismatch between education and employment are the priority issues that gave rise to new education reforms in secondary education. A number of strategies are tried out today at junior secondary (grades 6 to 9) and senior secondary (grades 10 to 13) levels of the general education system to address these issues while paying attention to ways and means of strengthening the link between research and policy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The American Filter

This study explored the television viewing habits of a cohort of Asian Indians who migrated to the US more than 40 years ago. This cohort eventually became acculturated into watching Indian television via the satellite dish. The study used the integrative communication theory and examined how two concepts of the theory relate to adaptation: enculturation and acculturation. The study produced findings that described how these Asian Indians used American television to acculturate to the US, but used American television as a filter through which they judged Indian television and distinguished between what they believed to be good and bad programming.     

Personalizing twitter communication: an evaluation of ‘rotation-curation’ for enhancing social media engagement within higher education

Social media content generated by learning communities within universities is serving both pedagogical and marketing purposes. There is currently a dearth of literature related to social media use at the departmental level within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This study explores the multi-voiced interactions of a UK Psychology department’s ‘rotation curation’ approach to using Twitter. An in-depth analysis of a corpus of 4342 tweets by 58 curators (14 staff, 41 students, and 3 guest curators) was carried out using a combination of computer-assisted and manual techniques to generate a quantitative content analysis. The interactions received (e.g. retweets and favorites) and type of content posted (e.g. original tweets, retweets and replies) varied by curator type. Student curators were more likely to gain interactions from other students in comparison to staff. This paper discusses the benefits and potential limitations of a multi-voiced ‘rotation curation’ approach to social media management.     

Multiple Aims in the Development of a Major Reform of the National Curriculum for Science in England

In the context of a major reform of the school science curriculum for 14–16‐year‐olds in England, we examine the aims ascribed to the reform, the stakeholders involved, and the roles of differing values and authority in its development. This reform includes an emphasis on socioscientific issues and the nature of science; curriculum trends of international relevance. Our analysis identifies largely ‘instrumental’ aims, with little emphasis on ‘intrinsic’ aims and associated values. We identify five broad categories of stakeholders focusing on different aims with, for example, a social, individual, political, or economic emphasis. We suggest that curriculum development projects reflecting largely social and individual aims were appropriated by other stakeholders to serve political and economic aims. We argue that a curriculum reform body representing all stakeholder interests is needed to ensure that multiple aims are considered throughout the curriculum reform process. Within such a body, the differentiated character of the science teaching community would need to be represented.     

Laboratory simulated dissipation of metsulfuron methyl and chlorimuron ethyl in soils and their residual fate in rice, wheat and soybean at harvest

Two sulfonylurea herbicides, metsulfuron methyl （Ally 20 WP） and chlorimuron ethyl （Classic 25 WP） were evaluated for their dissipation bchaviour in alluvial, coastal saline and laterite soils under laboratory incubated condition at 60% water holding capacity of soils and 30 ℃ temperature was maintained. In field study herbicides were applied twice for the control of grasses, annual and perennials broad leaves weeds and sedges in rice, wheat and soybean to find out the residual fate of both the herbicides on different matrices of respective crops after harvest. Extraction and clean up methodologies for the herbicides were standardized and subsequently analyzed by HPLC. The study revealed that the half-lives of metsulfuron methyl and chlorimuron ethyl ranged from 10.75 to 13.94 d irrespective of soils and doses applied. Field trials with rice, wheat and soybean also revealed that these two herbicides could safely be recommended for application as no residues were detected in the harvest samples.     

An agenda for green information retrieval research

Nowadays we use information retrieval systems and services as part of our many day-to-day activities ranging from a web and database search to searching for various digital libraries, audio and video collections/services, and so on. However, IR systems and services make extensive use of ICT (information and communication technologies) and increasing use of ICT can significantly increase greenhouse gas (GHG, a term used to denote emission of harmful gases in the atmosphere) emissions. Sustainable development, and more importantly environmental sustainability, has become a major area of concern of various national and international bodies and as a result various initiatives and measures are being proposed for reducing the environmental impact of industries, businesses, governments and institutions. Research also shows that appropriate use of ICT can reduce the overall GHG emissions of a business, product or service. Green IT and cloud computing can play a key role in reducing the environmental impact of ICT. This paper proposes the concept of Green IR systems and services that can play a key role in reducing the overall environmental impact of various ICT-based services in education and research, business, government, etc., that are increasingly being reliant on access and use of digital information. However, to date there has not been any systematic research towards building Green IR systems and services. This paper points out the major challenges in building Green IR systems and services, and two different methods are proposed for estimating the energy consumption, and the corresponding GHG emissions, of an IR system or service. This paper also proposes the four key enablers of a Green IR viz. Standardize, Share, Reuse and Green behavior. Further research required to achieve these for building Green IR systems and services are also mentioned.